Over the last five years, The International has become the pinnacle moment for the world of professional Dota. Now the excitement of the biggest event in esports is coming to the Majors, a series of seasonal marquee tournaments, which will take place throughout the year and around the globe. Dota’s newest tradition begins this fall with the Frankfurt Major.

The first Dota Major will take place over six days at Festhalle Messe in Frankfurt, Germany from November 16 through the 21st. It will feature 16 teams all competing at the main event for a total prize pool of $3,000,000, and will be produced by ESL.

Attendance to the Frankfurt Major will be open to the public and will not require a ticket for any day except for the day of the finals, which will take place on Saturday, November 21st. Tickets to the Frankfurt Major Finals will be sold in two separate waves this Sunday, September 27, the first at 11:00am CEST and the last at 7:00pm CEST. Each ticket will cost €50, and will be available here.

The teams that will be directly invited to the Frankfurt Major and its Regional Qualifiers will be revealed on October 5th. The Open Qualifiers will be hosted by FaceIt and Perfect World and will take place October 6 – 9, with the Regional Qualifiers occurring October 10 – 13. Open Qualifier registration will open to any Dota players who wish to compete on October 1st.

In other Dota news, we are doing some work on the underlying map rendering tech for the desert map terrain in order to make sure it is built in a compatible way for future iterations. Our first longform comic, which will come with the release of the Axe Immortal, is going to be much bigger than our previous comics.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be working on UI improvements based on the feedback we’ve received and releasing our first seasonal Compendium. You can also expect to see the 6.85 game balance update later this week.